Hadoop

Getting started with a distributed system like Hadoop can be a daunting task for developers. From installing and configuring Hadoop to learning the basics of MapReduce and other add-on tools, the learning curve is pretty high.

Hortonworks recently released the Hortonworks Sandbox for anyone interested in learning and evaluating enterprise Hadoop.

The Hortonworks Sandbox provides:

A virtual machine with Hadoop preconfigured.

A set of hands-on tutorials to get you started with Hadoop.

An environment to help you explore related projects in the Hadoop ecosystem like Apache Pig, Apache Hive, Apache HCatalog and Apache HBase.

Go to the browser at http://instance_ip and your single node Hadoop cluster should be running. Just follow through the UI; it has demos, videos and step-by-step hands-on tutorials on Hadoop, Pig, Hive and HCatalog.